Art & Creativity Quote by Cornelia Funke

Funke’s line flatters the romantic myth of solitary genius only long enough to undercut it. “Every author” is doing quiet, democratic work here: she’s collapsing the hierarchy between canon and comfort read, between the Great Book and the dog-eared paperback. Inspiration isn’t a lightning strike granted to a chosen few; it’s an ecosystem you live inside. The sentence is almost aggressively ordinary, and that’s the point. By choosing “inspired” over “influenced,” Funke keeps the emotional charge of creation while making it communal rather than mystical.

The subtext is a defense of reading as apprenticeship. For a children’s and YA author whose work (Inkheart especially) is obsessed with books as portals, this functions like a manifesto: stories don’t descend from nowhere, they migrate. The “books that she reads” phrase also signals a kind of ethical stance about craft: your voice isn’t “pure,” it’s composed, accumulated, and revised through contact with other voices.

The context matters. Funke wrote and rose to global prominence in a market that loves branding authors as singular “world-builders.” Her quote pushes back against that packaging. It also smuggles in permission for young writers: you’re not “copying” when you’re absorbing; you’re joining a lineage. Even the gendered “she” is a small corrective in a culture that defaults to “he” when talking about authorship. Funke isn’t just describing how writing happens; she’s widening who gets to imagine themselves as a writer, starting with the simple act of being a reader.